Kathi Thomas comes from a family who has been here for generations. On her father's side, Nanye-hi "Nancy Ward" was the last "beloved woman" of the Cherokee until the 1980's. http://smithdray.tripod.com/nancyward-index-5.html#iwp and http://www.msnbc.com/modules/women_politics/default.htm

There is a DAR Chapter named after this ancestor in Chattanooga, Tennessee and her grave is marked as a state landmark. http://benjaminclevelandchapter.org/photo1.html

A quote from Nancy Ward, during a council with the Americans: "You know that women are always looked on as nothing; but we are your mothers. You are our sons. Our cry is all for peace." Has much changed over the past 200+ years?  "She is often referred to by feminist scholars as an inspiration and is revered by the Cherokee people of Oklahoma as well as the Eastern Band Cherokees of North Carolina." (from the gale website listed below.)

Kathi has often wondered if the "Mrs. Bean" that Nancy saved from being burned at the stake could be an ancestor to her mother's people, but she has never been able to find the connection. It would certainly be an interesting connection if Kathi's father's ancestor saved Kathi's mother's ancestor! (http://www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio/ward_n.htm)

Kathi's father was born on a farm in what was then "Indian Territory" (now Northeastern Oklahoma) which one of his ancestors received after walking the "Trail of Tears." ( Kathi is a member of the Cherokee Nation.) In high school, he played basketball and football.  Kathi's father did not finish college, although he attended college in Miami, Oklahoma.

He worked for companies such as Hudson Engineering, building gasoline plants all over North and South America. He was fluent in Spanish, and was known for being able to teach native workers how to do all the work, so that outside people didn't have to be imported to build these plants. He met Kathi's mother when he worked for a surveying company in Colorado and she worked at a V.A. Mental Asylum there. (She told Kathi later that when the got the job offer from the V.A., she didn't know you could say "no" to the government when they offered you a job!)

Before Kathi was born, her family lived in Chile for several years. Kathi missed being born in Chile by just a few weeks, and was born instead in Lubbock,TX.

On Kathi's mother's maternal side, her people came over from Germany- from Bavaria through England an then into the port of Philadelphia in the 1600's. They came for religious freedom, to escape persecution for being Protestant. They moved to Pennsylvania, and then into Southwestern Louisiana (Merryville) early on. There is a family cemetery outside of Merryville with ancestors back to the 1700's buried there. http://home.att.net/~lvhayes/Genealog/Cems/Beau/hennigan.txt

Kathi's mother's maternal grandfather 4 generations back, Stephen Williams (http://www.cemetery.state.tx.us/pub/user_form.asp?step=1&pers_id=25) , fought in the Revolutionary War when he was a teenager. Later, he was in the army during the war of 1812 in Louisiana, and then came to Texas, where, at the age of 75, he rode from SE Texas (Jasper) to San Antonio de Bexar with four of his grandsons to participate in the Siege of Bexar (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/BB/qeb1.html )

During the Texas Centennial, Stephen's body was moved from Jasper to Republic Hill in the State Cemetery, just a few rows away from Stephen F. Austin. Bob Bullock is buried right next to Stephen. Each Memorial Day, at 10 AM, the SAR and DAR Chapters in Austin hold a Memorial Day Service, in which Stephen is one of two people honored, Stephen and Lt. Rankin being the only 2 in the State Cemetery to have served in both the Revolutionary War and the Texas War for Independence.

Stephens' descendants stayed in the Newton/Jasper area, where they married into the Hennigan Family.

Kathi's great grandfather JEM Hennigan was very influential in Merryville politics. He owned the big general store there and was very involved in community life. 

Kathi's mother was one of 10 children, living just the other side of the Louisiana border. It was a "yours, mine and ours" type of family. Kathi's grandfather, John Wesley Bean was married and had a child, but his wife died. He married Kathi's grandmother, Curvency "Curry" Hennigan, and they had 2 children, Kathi's mother Lettie Ruth, and her Uncle Jim. He was a man of many talents- a girl's basketball coach, an attorney and a publisher of theMerryville Times, the local newspaper.  He died of pneumonia in 1919. His widow then married Thomas Riggs, who had previously been married and had 3 children; together Curry & Thomas had more children. According to the family, there was never any difference between which child came from which marriage, all were treated equally.  When Curry died, she left land that had come from John Wesley's family to all of the children. Kathi's mother really wanted to keep this land together; it was all that was left from the Mexican Land Grant given to an ancestor. She was able to get the land back together, and those 40 acres are still in the family today, (since 1835.) It is the only part of that land grant still held by descendants of the Mary "Polly" Williams (daugher of Stephen Williams.)

Kathi's mother attended and graduated from St. Joseph's Nursing School in Houston. Her sister Alice Riggs attended along with her. Both became Registered Nurses. Kathi remembers getting every vaccination that came along as a child, because her mother wanted the kids kept well. She remembers climbing up into the big pine tree trying to avoid getting a shot, but her Mom just waited her out.

When Kathi was small, during the summer, she and her family sometimes went to wherever her father was working and lived there, or stayed with her paternal grandparents on their farm outside of Vinita, OK.. In this way, she lived in places from Sucre, Bolivia to Newcastle, Wyoming. When they returned from Bolivia, Kathi spoke a combination of British English (everyone they knew there who spoke English were British), Spanish and Portuguese. That was quite a novelty in their small SE Texas home town!  They also traveled almost every summer to Mexico City to visit Kathi's great aunt & uncle for a couple of weeks. Perhaps due to these early travels, Kathi has long loved travel, especially international travel, as well as studying the history of the area to which they were going and has has a special place in her heart for Mexico, Central & South America. Kathi remembers coming back from Mexico at a very young age, maybe 4 or 5, and telling her friends she'd been climbing pyramids in Mexico, only to have them tell her they "knew" that pyramids were ONLY in Egypt!

Kathi's mother worked as a school nurse and in the hospital. She was a school nurse early on, and then when Kathi was in high school, she went back to work as a Countywide school nurse.

When Kathi was in the 6^th grade, her father left the gasoline industry for good, Kathi's parents began their nursery business at their home, growing and selling vegetable and bedding plants. It was there that Kathi met a friend who was to be very important to her, Alma V. Tamborello. One hot day, Mrs. T stopped by the nursery to buy some plants. Kathi noticed her dogs in the car, and asked if she could bring them water and take them for a walk. Then she noticed the "Tamborwood, Running Quarter horses" sign on the doors. Kathi has loved horses as long as she can remember. She and Mrs. T struck up a conversation, which led to Kathi & her parents being invited over to Burkeville to visit at "the farm." From that visit, a deep friendship developed. The Tamborellos had no children, and Kathi shared common interests with them in the outdoors, dogs, and horses. Kathi's parents didn't have any spare money those days; they were barely making a living with their nursery and florist. The Tamborellos let Kathi come to stay with them in the summers, where Kathi could swim and ride to her heart's content. From such chance meetings, deep friendships spring. Kathi knows the difference those summers made to her life, and it is one of her motivations in helping young people. When they have interests that are met, kids don't get into trouble.

Kathi's middle sister, Marilynn,has shaped some of her beliefs about mental health/mental retardation. Marilynn has mild mental retardation. In the 1950's, there was no place for mentally retarded children in public school. Marilynn technically died 7 times at birth, but was revived. The lack of oxygen to her brain left her mildly delayed. Although she was 'slow' to do milestone events (sitting up, talking, etc.) she was not officially diagnosed with mental retardation until she was around 9 or 10 years old, in the 4^th grade. At that point, the public schools didn't have a place for her, and Kathi's mother couldn't afford to stay home and take care of her. She was working full time as a nurse at this point. Being a nurse got Marilynn on priority for State Schools, and Marilynn entered the Travis State School in Austin. This was so far away- over 5 hours at that time to get here, so that their family didn't get to visit very often. They'd bring her home for Christmas and for summer, but that was about it. Later, as State Schools closer to home opened, Marilynn transferred, first to Mexia, and then to Lufkin State School, where she lived until the early 1970's. Because of this, Kathi understands how much it means to families to be able to educate their developmentally delayed children in public schools. She knows what a hardship it was on her family to have Marilynn so far away, and she vows to work to return funding to MHMR and Special Education programs so that these children, truly our most innocent and vulnerable, may reach their fullest potential.

Kathi has long loved the outdoors. Growing up close to what became the Big Thicket National Preserve, Kathi was an avid canoeist, loving paddling trips down Village Creek, and trips to canoe the Guadalupe and Medina Rivers in Texas and the Buffalo in Arkansas. The environment is important to Kathi, understanding that what we do to the earth now affects our children and their children. Kathi believes this is a legacy we should protect, not exploit.

Another life-changing experience for Kathi was the adoption of their daughter, Lettie, from Guatemala. Going through the process of adoption, and the problems they encountered with their agency had made Kathi both an ardent advocate of adoption and of adoption reform.

 Currently, in Texas, agencies and facilitators who do no domestic adoptions are not regulated in any form or fashion, and this is wrong. ALL children are precious and should be protected. All adoptive parents need to have post placement reports, most countries require it, but our state and our nation don't require parents to comply with these laws from other countries, and that is how things happen like the little Russian girl, who was sexually molested by her adoptive father for 5 years, because he refused to have the post-placement visits. Post placement visits might have caught this before it went so very long.

With their adoption from Guatemala, Kathi and her husband have seen, first hand, what happens in a country when there are no social "safety nets." In Guatemala, many children are illiterate, education is supposed to be free, but it either isn't provided or isn't free to many, especially to the Maya. In Guatemala, there is no ready access to contraceptives and women's health care (or any other kind, for that matter.) Guatemala has one of the highest fertility and birth rates in the Americas, and one of the highest under 5 mortality rates. The Congress there recently passed legislation that would give ready access to Guatemalan women, but the President vetoed it. When Congress passed it again over his veto,  he got the "Constitutional Court" to overrule it. This was simply because of his religion, which does not believe in birth control or abortion. Kathi respects his right to believe that, and for those who believe that, they shouldn't use contraceptives or have an abortion, but in this case, the President of Guatemala is forcing his religious beliefs on many who believe differently, and that is wrong. If they want to get at the root cause for people wanting to have abortions, then they need to work on ending unwanted pregnancies, just as we need to do in the US. When we bring down unwanted pregnancies, and bring up the income and health access for families, Kathi believes we'll be on the way to lowering abortion rates, which is something everyone can support.